Other Ways To Have Fun
by OpportuneMoment
Summary: Thoughts on Bella's condition for marrying Edward, and the reason for his reluctance leads to a possible solution.


**_Other Ways To Have Fun_**

 _Thoughts on Bella's 'condition' for marrying Edward, and the reason for his reluctance leads to a possible solution._

 ** _Disclaimer:_** _I do not own the characters of Bella and Edward. Just jumping into their heads for a little bit. Don't sue me._

 _Rated M for content._

 _Authors note: experienced fic-writer but this is my first Twilight fic. Enjoy._

* * *

His lips, ever cold, broke the kiss as his hands pushed her gently but insistently away. _There's that brick wall again_ , thought Bella. Ever since she'd lain down her condition for conceding to his ridiculous need for a wedding, their moments of intimacy had been briefer than ever. He would allow her to initiate the kiss, even seem to enjoy it, until the instant her body began to lose control and her hands would wander from his hair towards his chest. Then it was all over.

It hurt. The first time she'd been pushed away, she had thought he simply didn't want her in that way, and said so. He'd jumped to deny that, of course, assuring her that though he was not human, he was a man in all other respects. But lately she'd begun to question the truth of that. When passions ran high, he would always find a way to break it off, change the subject, anything to avoid going further than he was willing to. How could his feelings be as strong as he claimed, if it was so easy to ignore her obvious need?

Ah, but it was all for her safety, he said. If he ever let himself go, gave his supposed passion free reign, he could kill her in a second. She shuddered. If a caress stronger than a whisper could snap her neck, what would it truly be like if he reached that place of purest pleasure – a place she'd only read about? Would he drive though her like the point of a compass though flimsy textbook paper? It didn't bear thinking about.

Edward's brow furrowed as she shivered at her bleak thoughts. He looked askance at her, and she shook her head, reluctant to let him in on these thoughts.

"Tell me," he urged quietly.

"It's just… every time we kiss…" She couldn't finish, a lump was forming in her throat. She knew she shouldn't feel rejected, but her system was flooded with enough hormones at the moment to make it impossible to ignore the feelings.

"Bella," he began softly, in that 'we've talked about this' kind of tone he often held, "You know I couldn't live with myself if I hurt you."

"I know, I know." She turned her face away, desperate to hide the water brimming in her eyes. Instead, he captured her face in his hands and planted soft kisses on each of her pressed-shut eyelids.

"It's time like these when I wish you were the mind-reader. I wish you could know what I'm feeling."

"Just tell me." She breathed, not opening her eyes. It was a whisper of a plea to save her sanity.

Edward drew in a ragged breath. She knew he didn't need to breathe in order to speak, but felt his nose at the base of her neck. He was drawing in her scent, something that must be a strange kind of torture for him.

"You're young. I'd wager that you read your first romance book maybe five years ago, that you imagined the scenes between the lovers and your heart began to race. Now here you are, in love, wanting the next stage of our relationship. Your feelings are so new, they won't be denied."

He drew her from him, as if to make a point. He waited patiently until she opened her eyes to meet his golden gaze and read the earnestness there.

"I've lived with constant temptation for a hundred years, Bella. Imagine when a monk takes a vow of chastity. It must be very hard at first. He is a man, no matter how devoted he is to religion. But years would pass, and though the feelings would not disappear, he would learn to live with them.

That's how it's been for me. I've denied myself the taste of human blood for a long time, and, well, it's hard to say it but for a vampire, there is little in the world that can equal that pleasure.

Now here I am, faced with a temptation entirely new to me," he ran his hand down the side of her neck, whispered over her shoulder and down her bare arm, "I can honestly say it's a struggle. I…"

She held her breath as she saw him struggle with the words. A man of the nineteenth century still, it must be a difficult subject to voice out loud.

"I _want_ you Bella, so very much. This need is so different from the thirst I've dealt with all this time. I've felt like an old man for a very long time, like I was over the silly fancies of youth, but… you've made me seventeen again, Bella, feeling everything that goes with it. But you wonder why, if I feel this strongly, that I am able to keep it in check. As I said, I am very practised at denying myself pleasure."

Watching his lips as they formed the word 'pleasure', Bella's heart jumped up a gear. Edward's answering smile as he heard it race was teasing.

"Please don't think I'm unaware of what you're feeling," he said, pressing his palm to her heart as emphasis, "And," his cheeky smile was even wider, "I have to admit, I love that I arouse you this much."

Bella's cheeks flamed red in response.

"I want you believe me when I tell you that you… do the same to me. It's all I can do not to…" he stopped abruptly and turned his face away, collecting himself. When he turned back, his eyes were calm again.

"You see, I can't forget, even for a second, that my passion could be the death of you. And then, there's the other reason for holding back."

Bella was fully aware of Edward's archaic sense of morality. Even if he was able to make love to her without the danger of killing her, she doubted that he could get past his old-fashioned notions of 'sin'. Edward didn't need to be able to read her mind this time, her distaste for this topic was written plainly on her face.

"I know you don't share the same ideals, Bella. It's 2013, not the 1900s, and times are different now. No one cares about the whole sex-before-marriage thing. But I come from a different time, my love. It's anathema to me to consummate a relationship that hasn't been sanctified first. I don't know if there really is a God, and you could argue that since I'll never get to meet him anyway, it shouldn't matter. But I am what I am, and I want to hold your hand and pledge my whole being to you before I… pledge my body to you."

Even though she had railed against the idea a million times, suddenly putting it that way sounded the most romantic thing in the world. It was straight out of a Jane Austen novel; all the honour and nobility of it – it was Edward to the core. How could she claim to love him and yet refuse to respect the incorruptible morals that made him who he was?

"Edward, I understand," she breathed, "Thank you for talking to me about this. I guess that fact that you can't read my mind does create barriers between us sometimes. You've spent your whole life having everyone's deepest thoughts right in front of you, and never sharing your own. But I _need_ you to share them."

"I will, my love, I'm sorry. I'm sorry I couldn't open up sooner; that I let you go on thinking I just didn't feel that way. I do. Never doubt it."

His lips were on hers then; a nibbling, caressing kiss that lacked the force she would have put into it, but was somehow even more sensual.

He let the kiss go on far longer than usual, almost as though he was pushing his control to the limit in order to show her that she was wanted, desired. When they finally parted, it was mutual. He did not push her away.

Her mood immeasurably improved by his wonderful admission of passion, Bella was reluctant to spoil it, but as long as they were being so open on the topic, she wanted to press her point.

"I understand what you mean about control, and don't get me wrong I'm just as scared as you if things… went wrong. But I don't believe you're capable of hurting me. I think if we tried—"

"Bella..." he began, a sad little fall to his voice.

"No, wait. It's not a condition any more Edward. I'm tired of this bargaining. I'll be your wife first. I know how much it means to you, and strangely it's actually starting to sound more romantic than terrifying to me too. We'll have our wedding, show all our family and friends that we are in this forever. But after, before I change, I want to experience the best thing a _human_ can ever have. All this arousal that you enjoy so much has to come to something, Edward, or I swear I'm going to go crazy! I need this, as much as you need the altar and the rings."

His brow furrowed in thought as though he warred with himself, going between his belief that she would be hurt should they attempt it and his conflicting desire to give her whatever she wanted.

Finally, he sighed in a resigned way.

"If you truly want to risk it, then so be it. I'll hunt beforehand, so I'm as in control as I ever could be, and then… we'll try. I can't promise I won't have to stop if I feel I can't hold myself in check."

Bella sighed. She knew it was necessary, but surely making love and holding oneself in check were mutually exclusive. Shouldn't it be a letting go, an abandonment of everything in the moment of release? Still, she had wrung this much from him; they would give it a try. She had more faith in him than he had in himself, as usual.

"Thank you… it's all I want, that we try. If we don't make it…"

Suddenly she was imagining the scene: Edward, gloriously naked, his cool skin moving with hers, the sensations as he would enter her, the need building… and then, nothing? To be suddenly stopped, just when her passion was greatest, would that be an even greater torture than not starting at all?

Since they met, her closed-off brain had confounded him, she knew. Many times she'd been grateful for the secrecy of her thoughts, but there were times when she almost wanted him in her head. Maybe then they could experience it together, if only in her wildly ardent imagination. Just thinking about making love to him, the sensations were almost as vivid as doing it. Her heart raced, her belly trembled, the heat between her thighs built and her hand absently descended.

But as much as he could not read her thoughts, he could read her body. _That_ had never been a problem for him.

Her eyes must have drifted closed in her reverie, for she didn't see him move his fingers to her collarbone and rest lightly there. When she opened her eyes, she was startled at the intensity of his gaze. His lips were parted, as though he panted for breath in time with her. One look, and she knew he could guess her mind as easily as reading a book. Her already heated cheeks flamed anew.

"You really are a wonder, Bella," he said raggedly, "Sometimes you hide so well I couldn't guess your mood for the world. Other times…"

"Sorry," she mumbled, her traitorous hand racing back to her mouth to cover her embarrassment.

He captured the hand before it got there, and brought it to his chest. His shirt was still open from her silly attempts at seduction earlier. Now he placed her palm on his cold skin.

"Don't be," he said, a smile of anticipation on his face, "You've just given me a solution to our impasse. You're right, this need _is_ driving you crazy. You must have satisfaction, Bella, and I'd prefer not to break either of my rules."

"But you said we would—"

"I know what I said, Bella, but…" his fingers whispered down her neck and dipped below the collar of her blouse. His other hand began an exquisitely slow path from her knee up her thigh. "There are other ways to have fun. I can't allow myself to let go, but I can still share in your pleasure, much more so than any human man could. A vampire's senses are very acute. Not only can I listen to the pace of your heart, but hear the rush of your blood, feel the heat of you, smell the pheromones on you as you… think what you're thinking. If _this_ is what your imagination does to your body, well, I'd like to see what the reality would do." His left hand reached the apex of her thighs at exactly the right time, and even though the thick denim of her jeans, she burned to the core.

"You mean you want to… um…" she couldn't even phrase it, the embarrassment gripped her tongue again and her breath was too shallow to fight it.

"I mean I want to." His answer was a whisper as his lips dipped to hers, his hand on her chest pushing her gently backwards until she was laid on the soft bed. A bed that was never slept in, nor would it ever be. But there were better uses for beds.

* * *

Bella snuggled in closer to him, against his bare chest. She might have found it a little cold to be pressed against his skin, but the last hour had raised her temperature so much that now his coolness was a welcome relief.

He was shirtless, but that had been the only piece of clothing he would shed, whereas she was completely naked. The moment he'd begun to unbutton her jeans, a wave of fear and embarrassment had threatened to ruin her breathless anticipation completely. She had suddenly realised how terrifying it was to let someone see… _all_ of you, all your imperfections… she had suddenly wished she was a bit more shapely, a bit less pale, that she could have shaved again before this unexpected encounter…

But his eyes and his swift indrawn breath as he revealed her body allayed her fears. He had looked at her, inexplicably, like a man would look at a cross between a supermodel and a goddess; with a kind of reverence tinged with lust. It sent her wild.

Now, as she lay against him, exhausted and sated more fully that she would ever have dreamed, she had to admit that he was, as usual, quite right. As she had realised that he would rather do... _this_ instead of his earlier agreement to at least try and make love to her, she had felt a little cheated, like he'd gone back on his word. Now, however, she wondered if there was any single experience that could equal what they had just done.

So many preconceived notions, little prudish ideas long held, had been knocked out of the park in the last hour. She had never been one for masturbating. She had considered it somehow impure, a low thing. No, she had wanted to save those special sensations only for the purity of true love's perfect coupling. Yet he had shown her that what she'd only thought of as some sort of lustful self-pleasure could be so much more: something special, truly shared between two people. In this at least, Edward had been the progressive one, whilst she had been firmly dragged out of the middle ages. She snickered softly at the role reversal.

"Something funny?" He asked, and she could still hear the smile in his voice, the smile that had been irrepressible from the first gasp to the final scream.

"I was just thinking that I didn't expect you to come up with _this_ as a solution. You being 'Mister 1900s', all concerned about the sanctity of marriage, and decency and all that. You want to be married before we make love, but somehow this didn't cross your line."

"I didn't say it wasn't a stretch. I have my morals, Bella, just like everyone. But _technically_ I didn't break either of my rules. I just let them bend a little."

"Mmm, I'm glad. But… I have to ask: you're good at so many things because you've had years to practise them, but where on earth did you learn to do _that_?!"

"You think all I've read for the past hundred years were science or language books?"

Suddenly the image leaped unbidden to her mind of Edward, usually the very picture of sophistication and maturity, wide-eyed as a teenager he devoured page after page of erotica. She wondered if his unchanging, unliving body would have been capable of the same flood of feelings as he pictured the scenes in his mind's eye.

"I read _Lady Chatterly's Lover_ once," Bella mused, "But honestly I think it was a bit lost on me. I just found the whole thing sort of silly. I just wasn't interested in boys or sex or anything. I liked _romance_ , like in Jane Austen novels, but anything else was just crass."

Edward snickered softly. "And you call _me_ old-fashioned. You like books about people courting in high society, where they wouldn't even be allowed a kiss." His lips dipped to her shoulder to rest there and his arms wrapped more securely around her torso. Bella wriggled, the button of his jeans pressing uncomfortably into the top of her buttocks. He felt her discomfort and pulled away a little, and she instantly regretted moving. He felt so wonderful, there against her skin. The heat of her climax still lingered, a lovely relaxed feeling. She only wished he could have truly shared it…

The idea occurred to her at exactly the same time as the knowledge that he would not allow it. Another shade of hypocrisy from him; he would skilfully manipulate her soft human body into ecstasy, but not for a moment did she think he would relax and allow her to experiment with the same 'rule-bending'.

"What's wrong? Are you too cold?" He asked, all concern, his senses so acute that he could feel her mood change.

"No, I just… I feel incomplete somehow." It was a little white lie of course, but at least he couldn't read her mind, and with her face turned away he also wouldn't see the hint of it in her eyes. Of course there _was_ a grain of truth in it: though her body was as sated as could be, emotionally she felt an imbalance that he was not in the same happy position.

In response, he touched his lips to the back of her neck, and one cool hand inched down her abdomen. "I can help with that." She could hear the smile in his voice, and though she would not have believed it, her body responded, leaving her wondering how she could possibly be so ready again so fast!

But that was not her plan. She turned round to face him, gasping as her hot nipples touched his cold chest.

"I'm incomplete because I need to touch you, to really feel you, Edward."

"Bella, we can't—"

"Not like that," she stopped him with a finger to his marble lips, then very deliberately drew it quickly down his chest to the waistband of his jeans, lingering on the button.

"I can't lose control, my love. The damage I could do…"

"Trust me."

Edward looked into her earnest face. Her voice was a whisper, her eyes a plea for the kind of surrender that she had given him. A relationship, a _marriage_ was an equal partnership. She had every right to ask of him the same simple trust, the same vulnerability that she'd shown, and he knew it. The problem was, after a hundred years of rigid control, he simply did not know if he _could_ relinquish his hold on himself. But he would try, for her.

"I trust you." He breathed.

Bella released the breath she didn't know she'd been holding. The heat mounted within her, a pleasant burn. She worked his clothing slowly, unhurried. Now that she had been gifted with his perfect body, she was going to take her time exploring it.

A grin of delicious anticipation spread over her face as his eyes slid closed.

FIN


End file.
